Story Pacing and the Leveling Experience

Is anyone else feeling like the pacing of the personal story is way off? The personal story advances 2 levels every step of the way, but the leveling pace drops off steeply at around level 25. At this stage, the only reason I want to play the gameis the story, so it feels like a blocking issue that is built into the game. I am not the type to full complete on the first run through of a game (I did something similar in Guild Wars), so I feel as if the game isn't built with my kind of playstyle in mind.

That being said, I could always just find more new zones to grind up, thus alleviating some of the repetition in running events, but this isn't a solution at all. I would love to do all the hearts, I just hate being forced to do so just to progress in the story.

ANet kind of went out of their way to force you to branch out and try more stuff even if you dislike it. So you'll probably just have to suck it up and do other zones and such. Some of the DE chains can be interesting as well.

Think quest chain in other MMO's, and take out the running back and fore NPC's. The chain will also vary depending on whether you succeed or fail.

Spoiler

For example, a Charr Effigy (big burning thing) comes along. If you don't stop it (causing the event to fail), it destroys a statue of one of their heroes. You'll then get an event to protect to Charr repairing the statue from waves of Flame Legion (the Bad Charr).

Another one I've seen is you protect an Asuran researcher gathering Skritt for experimentation. Succeed that, and he'll take them back, which will lead to another event where the Skritt break free, and you need to kill them all.

Event chains can also cause Waypoints to become "contested", meaning you can't use them.

ANet kind of went out of their way to force you to branch out and try more stuff even if you dislike it. So you'll probably just have to suck it up and do other zones and such. Some of the DE chains can be interesting as well.

Actually they made it a bit easier. In the first DE's you HAD to go and do everything to get leveled up and you were still behind a bit which forced you to grind de's or do a lot of WvW. Now you can do like half of the stuff and be just fine.

At any rate you aren't forced to do only one thing. There are a bunch of ways to level up. You got WvW, crafting (which is actually a really good way), completing the maps, DE's, hearts, and personal story. If you are only doing a couple of these, then obviously you are going to have a rough time since you are only getting like a third of the experience you would be getting; however, if you do everything, the levels will just fly by.

I'm enjoying just doing everything the game offers and taking it at a slow pace. I like the variety and haven't had any issues not being the right level for my story quests. Like another poster said - it's just another of the many things I can do. I have done a little bit of gathering and crafting but not much. Mostly I do all the hearts in a zone and as many of the DE's as I can, repeating some of them along the way. I do every point of interest, waypoint, and vista as well in every zone because aside from being a fun diversion, they net a good amount of XP as well. Have done a bit of WvW but most of my leveling was completing zones and doing my story.

Also if you're into story than doing hearts and DE's are also a good way to learn story, aside from seeing your personal story. And some of them occur in the same areas as your story so you get some crossover there.

Also don't forget to complete all the waypoints, points of interest, and vistas in the city as well.

I agree actually that once you hit the 25 zones it becomes pretty hard to level up. I was at level 27 in the Gendarran Fields, and have 100% on the other two human zones, and doing quests in that area was way too hard because it was all over level 30. I think that the zones should try to have more of a segway between the zones that help you ease in, and I've done every DE pretty much in every area I've been in, I even did a few in the Norn area with a ranger friend when we were out pet hunting.
The only thing I've found to do if you want to try to go to a couple of the areas later on is just to go WvW and play that, it isn't too hard to get a level during WvW, even timers are pretty small, on defending you could possibly get 3 or 4 gold medals during 1 siege

If you go to the other races areas, then you are saying you only have 1 play through the game, as switching to another race will no longer open up things you have not done before.

Is there any MMO in the world in which this isn't the case? All racial content will converge at some point. And if you're traveling the world seeing things and doing the maps, you'll probably gain more than enough XP to do the personal story with.

I'm 6 levels behind, and everything in the story missions kills me in 2 hits. This is especially a problem when they're ranged........

And I've been doing all the hearts along the way too..... along with mining/gathering/crafting/etc....

I don't see how I'm going to get 6 more levels with nothing to do. Guess I'll have to hop on a 10-hour WvW queue.

Gained two levels 8 to 10 running around Lions Arch finding all of the areas and vistas. If you are constantly behind then I would suggest doing something other than your story, everything you do gains experience of some kind.

I found the pacing to be spot on, but this is only the case if you do everything in your path and maybe a little bit more. That means doing every heart quest and dynamic event in your first couple of zones as well as gathering crafting materials pretty much all the time. I even supplemented in some pvp which gave me a level or two. Once you get to a certain point in your story quest it actually seems to lead you to other race's zones which you can then do those quests too if you need a few more levels. If you are rushing through and are the complete opposite of a completionist, then yea you will probably feel under-leveled.